You need to think about it the other way around. What we pay in Australia is a fair price for games. What they pay over in the US is too little, because the US is a highly competitive market and corporations tend to slash their own margins - destructively - just to remain competitive.

Australia is the more sustainable market. I would have thought what happened to the economies of the US, Japan and Europe was proof of that.

I'm not sure what retail market you are talking about because in the Australia I live in game prices are slashed fairly regularly by retailers and street dates are broken. Outside of games there is a "price war" between the major supermarkets where they sell standard goods bellow cost as loss leaders. We have fairly strong retail competition so it's strange for you to imply that we don't.

Completely different to what happened in the US BTW. That was basically because banks gave people loans they couldn't afford to pay and then bundled up these loans into attractive sounding packages. Some peoples sold these packages and effectively bet against them. People can't pay loans, house of cards crumble, rich mans laugh all the way to the bank/jail. The Europe problem is more to do with the fact that the EU doesn't have a natural money transfer system between it's "states" like we have for example. Japan? I don't know much about Japan but... their big exports are things like cars and Nintendoses. Who has money for that stuff? Game over.

If the prices paid for games in the US were unsustainable then we wouldn't have a game market given the share of the market the US is. This is especially true given the fact that both Microsoft and Sony lose money on the consoles themselves and claw their money back through games. You could argue that the game prices should be higher so that riskier games and smaller developers can more easily exist but I think that's a different argument again. The same thing applies to movies but you don't hear people complaining about the lack of indie films with Avatar budgets.

There is a point to be made that you can potentially sell more copies at a lower price and make more money

Economists would tell you that's a very bad idea. The number of copies that need to be sold to scale to the price reduction make it a losing battle.

I don't disagree, our Chancellor used this as justification for dumping the top-rate 50p in the pound tax rate - didn't make a lick of sense to anyone who was making under £250K/yr.

I'm going to continue the thread drift on the topic of game pricing because frankly that's more interesting than speculating about whether or not Wii-U games will have a US$49.99 RRP. I will agree with the "Chocolate Goldfish" on what he's saying in echoing Nintendo's "race to the bottom" argument: going cheap to sell more copies isn't doing anyone any real favours. I own a couple of Angry Birds games on my iPhone - I like the design and the gameplay is simple, clever and fun. But practically giving the game away wasn't necessary and in fact seems to have engendered this unbelievable reaction of greedy entitlement amongst people who write user reviews of iOS games which are good but have the nerve to charge something approaching a more sustainable price. I've read more than one 1-star review for a decent game complaining about the fact that it costs two quid rather than being free or something well-executed like Atari Greatest Hits - the most complete and brilliant example of classic emulation on the platform - being derided for only including Missile Command on free play when you can unlock the entire catalogue for less than ten quid.

It's kind of sad to look at something as brilliant as Pinball Arcade on iOS and realise that having what is now the equivalent of a console release costs less than half the price and is still one of the more expensive games on the platform. I cannot see how game developers and publishers can stay in business with that kind of model, but maybe they're enjoying massive sales and are all having regular champagne luncheons and I'm fretting about nothing. I don't expect we'll have long to wait to find out...

I'm going to continue the thread drift on the topic of game pricing because frankly that's more interesting than speculating about whether or not Wii-U games will have a US$49.99 RRP. I will agree with the "Chocolate Goldfish" on what he's saying in echoing Nintendo's "race to the bottom" argument: going cheap to sell more copies isn't doing anyone any real favours. I own a couple of Angry Birds games on my iPhone - I like the design and the gameplay is simple, clever and fun. But practically giving the game away wasn't necessary and in fact seems to have engendered this unbelievable reaction of greedy entitlement amongst people who write user reviews of iOS games which are good but have the nerve to charge something approaching a more sustainable price. I've read more than one 1-star review for a decent game complaining about the fact that it costs two quid rather than being free or something well-executed like Atari Greatest Hits - the most complete and brilliant example of classic emulation on the platform - being derided for only including Missile Command on free play when you can unlock the entire catalogue for less than ten quid.

You know, what you say there is so true. When it comes to games, people want so much for so little now. I remember back in the days of the Super Nintendo games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy III were released for $79.99 USD in the mid 90's. Video games did not have a set standard pricing. Heck, as kids of the 90's we gladly saved up money from our paper routes and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to buy these games like Street Fighter II: Turbo for $75.00.

On a side-note: It would be better if the 3DS games would cost 40 euro, like DS games. I mean: in the past I said that 50 euro for a 3DS game is reasonable, but now I notice I have become a little hesitant for buying new 3DS titles. And I guess I am not the only one! They say that in Europe a lot less 3DS games are sold compared to Japan. While there are several reasons, I guess one of the reasons is that people in Europe find 3DS games to expensive!!

Ummm guys.... I wasn't defending Apple's model or saying that games in the US should cost less. I was saying that Australians get overcharged and that savings in distribution by selling it digitally should be at least partially passed on to the consumer.

Also it's pretty strange to be quoting prices adjusted for inflation from the niche era of gaming. Let's also not forget that the games in the 90s had to include the cost of cartridges and one of the major advantages of the PlayStation was the fact that it's games were cheaper because it costs less to produce a copy of the game. What's so different now? This is an industry that is as big as the movie industry now so what did you expect to see? The combined sales of NES, SMS and Atari 7800 were ~77million and the combined sales of Wii, 360 and PS3 are currently ~226million. So you have to also take those things into account when talking about the difference in price between then and now.

Really guys... can you start up a whole new thread about this? just warning you, I'm feeling inclined to delete this thread or hope it gets locked. This has gone way out of control.

Why start up a thread new thread for discussing game prices when we have this perfectly good thread for discussing game prices? Pretty much every post in this thread thus far has either been a response to the question of the topic directly, an example to explain an argument relating directly to the topic or a rebuttal of a point made in a post prior. In terms of off topicness your complaining about off topicness is the most off topic this thread has gone thus far.

Skywake, in no way shape or form are games cheaper to produce now. Look at the budgets - the simple fact is the cost of games is not scaling to the costs of making games.

That's why studios are now getting shut down after one single commercial failure.

I didn't say that games are cheaper to make I said that they are cheaper to print and distribute and there is a larger market now. Also the main and pretty much only point I have made thus far is that I can't see any reason for a higher price in Australia. That what it looks like to me is anti-globalisation and bordering on collusion which isn't a good thing and isn't really legal.

I haven't once said that Wii U games should be cheaper than $60US at retail all I have said is that they shouldn't be $100AU at retail and that the downloadable copies should probably be cheaper than RRP. Still, whatever, you can keep arguing against this strawman if you want.

Skywake, in no way shape or form are games cheaper to produce now. Look at the budgets - the simple fact is the cost of games is not scaling to the costs of making games.

That's why studios are now getting shut down after one single commercial failure.

I didn't say that games are cheaper to make I said that they are cheaper to print and distribute and there is a larger market now. Also the main and pretty much only point I have made thus far is that I can't see any reason for a higher price in Australia. That what it looks like to me is anti-globalisation and bordering on collusion which isn't a good thing and isn't really legal.

I haven't once said that Wii U games should be cheaper than $60US at retail all I have said is that they shouldn't be $100AU at retail and that the downloadable copies should probably be cheaper than RRP. Still, whatever, you can keep arguing against this strawman if you want.

Except I'm not suggesting you are saying games should be cheaper than $60 US. Go read back, what I've been saying is that $100 is a fair price for a game. Ergo, games are too cheap in the US.

Now, we can continue to pretend we don't actually agree on 90% of this topic, or we can find something new to argue about. Your choice